Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. You know, it's been said that there are only two basic motivating forces in life, love and fear. Our primal minds often default to the latter. And perhaps the greatest gift of mindfulness is that it offers us the choice to step out of the conditioning of the mind and find our center in awareness and let our actions flow from love. Now, while fear is a perfectly natural emotion, when it takes us over, it often hijacks our ability to act with awareness, purpose, and clarity.

So how do we learn to face fears in a healthy way so they no longer define us or hold us back? I would argue we can do this in three steps. Step one, name it, to tame it. So when you feel fear arising, whether it's in the form of self-doubt, worry, you know, that fear that you're not enough, that unworthiness or social anxiety or any form of fear, soon as you recognize that you just mentally note to yourself, ah, fear is here. Research shows that simply naming the emotion makes us less reactive to it and can actually reduce the intensity of the emotion by up to 50%. The next step, thank the fear.

It's in our primal human nature for our minds to want to protect us. So if the mind detects a threat of any kind, it might start to make a lot of noise in the form of fear. So you can think of your mind as being like your inner security guard. It's just trying to protect you. So this inner security guard might want to turn on sirens and make a lot of noise to get your attention.

The more you ignore that noise, the more you ignore the fear, the louder it gets. It's only when you turn towards that inner security guard, acknowledge that you heard the warning, thank him for doing a great job, that he will then know he can relax and turn off the warning systems. So this is how we want to work with fear. By thanking the fear, you're doing the psychological equivalent of thanking that inner guard, telling him I'm aware of what's happening. You know, you've done your job.

You can relax now. Step three is to act with love. So in this step, you connect with your core values and what matters to you deep in your heart. So you might ask yourself, what would it look like to take actions guided by love and not fear? Maybe that would mean moving towards a goal you really care about despite the fear. Maybe it would mean asking someone on a date, helping someone who needs support, and perhaps it would be taking better care of your body and mind.

It might mean taking actions guided by your values, by integrity, courage, compassion, or patience. Whatever that looks like, I'll leave that exploration up to you, the main thing is to switch the focus out of the energy of fear and reconnect with love. So there's three steps, name it to tame it, thank the mind, and then act with love. So this is the invitation for, for practice to work with our fears in this way. And as always thank you for your practice and your presence here.

And now let's settle in today's meditation.